First steps
by The Halfa Wannabe
Summary: Emily McArthur, a should be college student in a high school body, a girl with conflicting emotions over her best female  used to be male  friend. Follow Emily as she explores who she is and what it means. Emily-centric
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All characters portrayed in this story belong to the good people over at Misfile, thank you for creating a wonderful story.

Emily's heart pounded in her chest. Her throat was dry and her hands sweaty. How could Ash not notice this. How? _I'm always like this, all the time, every time you're around, and you never notice, _Emily sucked in a deep breath as she tried to turn her attention to the movie the two friends were watching. Emily reached into the bowl of popcorn sitting between them on the couch, her face took on a red hue as it brushed against hers. Ash on the other hand was too engrossed in the movie to even notice her behavior.

_Dammit, I'm so nervous, how does she do this? She liked me, she __**likes**__ me, but, she never shows it, ever. Why am I so scared to admit the truth? _Emily dropped her head with a sigh, extremely thankful that Ash was too engrossed to notice her behavior. Ash looked over at her, and Emily started. "Hey, is it okay if I go grab another bag of popcorn?"

Emily looked down at the bowl and realized the bowl was down to the un popped kernels. "If there's another one in there go ahead." Emily managed to put a smile on her face as Ash headed into the kitchen. Emily quickly sneaked a look at her friend. _Cute butt, _she thought guiltily. Emily winced. At least she hadn't felt the need to run from the room like she'd nearly done the last time she'd caught herself looking down Ash's shirt.

Emily sighed, and looked down. When a bowl plopped into her lap she quickly jumped up in shock sending the popcorn spilling to the floor. Emily smacked herself in the face, then looked over at her best friend.

Ash looked sheepish as the two of them started to clean up the popcorn.

Emily started to curse in her head as she watched Ash out the side of her eye. Every move the red head made seemed to exaggerate itself, even the most innocent maneuver seemed to take on an almost sensual undertone.

Of course Emily knew the truth. Ash was too innocent to do anything like that. She'd never think to use her body to seduce someone, well, not since Colin. Though she'd suggested it at the time, Emily half dreaded finding Ash with a cut wrist the next day. She hadn't reacted well after the flirting.

Emily sighed even as she heard her friend start to curse.

"Crap is that the time? I gotta go Em." Ash deposited the last of her popcorn in the bowl, and hurried to rush out the door. "Bye, see you in school tomorrow!" Em got up and watched the Merkur pull away from the curb.

She could feel the loneliness in her heart as she watched her drive down the street. _Oh god, I'm in love with her._

_XR4Ti_

She gently knocked on the door in front of her. Emily dreaded the conversation about to take place more than anything else in the world. She _knew_ that things would never be the same again after this. She barely made out the muffled 'Come in' that responded to her.

Emily opened the door and saw her target stretched out on her bed with a book in front of her face. She looked up at Emily and waited even as the girl felt her mouth go dry again. "Um, could we talk for a minute, I need to tell you something.

Emily's mother smiled at her. "Sure, hop in." Emily quickly laid down on the other side of the bed. It had been several years since she'd just sat and talked to her mom like this. Heck, the two of them used to just sit in bed all night talking about this and that. Emily mentally translated that to them talking about college and education.

Emily could feel the tears in her eyes burn as she tried to hold them back. "Um, Mom, I'm not sure how to tell you this."

Em could immediately feel her mother stiffen across from her. She could almost feel the panic coming off her in waves. And she quickly got the response she expected. "Y-you're pregnant, aren't you? No no no NO! We're going straight to the hospital and getting an abortion," Emily watched her start to rant as she quickly started to get up before Emily pulled her back down.

"No Mom, I'm not pregnant."

Despite her hysteria the woman stopped dead to make sure she'd heard correctly. Once Emily repeated herself she sat down with her hand over her chest as if to calm her hyper-active heart. "Oh, god, I'm sorry, I just, that's, that's just how I told your grandma after I found out. I'm sorry I over reacted. So what was it you did want to tell me."

Emily squirmed under her mothers direct attention. She knew the moment was here, the moment she dreaded, the very second that made this whole thing real and unavoidable. "I-I think I might be in love with Ash."

Ms. McArthur stared at her daughter for a moment. In a pathetic attempt to break the tension Emily tried to crack a joke. "At least she can't get me pregnant, right?"

Her mother stared at her again before letting out a strained chuckle. "Yeah, yeah I guess not." She looked away from her daughter for a minute, even going so far as to sit and focus solely upon a vase on top of her dresser. "How, how long have you two," She left her question sitting in the air between them.

"We aren't. She, she doesn't even know I like her like that." Emily looked over at her mom who still seemed unable to look at her. She looked away and was surprised when her mom's arm snaked around her shoulders.

"Are you planning on telling her?" The embrace tightened.

It brought back memories of when she was younger and her mother would comfort her and drive back the fears of a child. Now it seemed so small and yet so much when used to fight against the fears of a young woman. "I don't know Mom. I, I know she likes me, or at least, she did. But I'm scared. What if I tell her, and, and then I stop being attracted to her. I, I don't want to hurt her if, if this is just a phase. She, she's had enough messed up stuff in her life that I don't want to hurt her like that." Emily turned to her mother no longer holding back the tears that now spilled down her face. Her eyes held a request, a plea for her mother to tell her what she should do.

The older woman just held her tighter. "I wish I could tell you what to do here but, I just, I just don't know sweetie.

The two sat there on the bed holding each other without speaking for almost an hour before Emily withdrew from the embrace and headed towards the door. She stopped eve as she held it open. "Mom, I, how are you taking this so well?"

She turned around and saw a blush on her mother's cheeks. "Oh, well, err, after you were born, I experimented a little."

Emily stared at her in shock, but then quickly left the room. She really didn't want to know the details.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Wow, finally Halfa Wannabe is back on the scene, hell, this might have cleared out some of the cobwebs in my brain. Hell, I might actually get back to writing on my other stories. Sorry about that by the way, I lost internet and then proceeded to run into a GIANT case of writer's block.

As always feedback is welcome.


	2. Chapter 2

Emily waved at Ash as she pulled away from the racer's house. Her hand quickly adjusted the stick as she brought herself up to speed while driving home after another day at school. Her mind wandered as she piloted the vehicle through the streets of Tempest.

It had been a few weeks since the talk with her mother. The first few days had been almost surreal. She'd always assumed that her mother was fairly straight-laced, the fact that she'd been involved with another woman, (no matter how short the time, and Emily had no intention of asking) had left her a little unsettled, and the air of awkwardness around the house still hadn't been broken.

Emily pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. She turned for a minute looking over the vehicle she'd won her first race in and smiled. Ash had taught her well, and the mere fact that Emily could do things her mother hadn't even imagined her doing was exhilarating, someone had lit a fire inside her chest. She walked towards the door, her thoughts a jumbled swirl of awkwardness with her mother, feelings for her friend, questions about her own sexuality, and knowledge that Ash had changed her life in more than one way. She may never love racing quite the same way as Ash, but she still loved it.

Emily's eyes swept over a stack of magazines as she walked past the coffee table and into the kitchen. A quick bite later and she walked over to what was no doubt the latest batch of educational magazines her mother had gotten. Her eyes widened as she saw the titles and then blushed. Apparently the awkwardness would last even longer.

- 2 hours later

Emily stared at the pile of magazines she'd left on her nightstand. The fact that her mother had bought them at all showed a side of her Emily hadn't seen before. On the other hand, as Ash would say, it was just friggin' creepy. Emily fought down her revulsion and opened the playboy while skimming through the pictures. Looking over the bodies of the models in the magazine she came across an inescapable conclusion, she found Ash more attractive.

_So, am I gay, or is it just Ash?Emily pondered as she continued to flip through the magazine. It wasn't until she started imagining her friend in the various poses that Emily started to fantasize._

She slowly unbuttoned her pants as her hand slowly slid beneath the waistband of her underwear while her eyes wandered the page. "EMILY!" Emily jerked her hand out of her pants with the sudden terror that her door would open before she could button up. She hurriedly fastened her pants before slowly climbing off her bed and moving to the door. "Yeah Mom?" She said swallowing the beating lump that had jumped from her chest to her throat.

"Dinnertime!"

Emily sighed in relief before throwing the magazine back towards her bed and walked down the steps and into the kitchen where she promptly stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at the scene in front of her even as her cheeks reddened, there was her mother sitting at the table with a meatloaf in the middle, not to mention the mashed potatoes and the macaroni and cheese. All of this was fairly normal, the abnormality was the distinctly uncomfortable tuner sitting at the table.

"Ash? What?"

"Hey Em, what's up?" the girl at the table asked while looking askance at Emily's mother. "Uh, I don't know, Mom? What's going on?"

Elizabeth just smiled. "Oh, honey, I just thought it was time I got to know your friend a bit more. After all, you spend so much time together. So I called her up and told her to be here at six."

Emily sighed internally. _Going a little too far in the understanding department Mom."Oh, I see."_

Emily slowly sat down to the plate her mother had already fixed. Emily and Ash both sat in uncomfortable silence while Elizabeth cut her meatloaf into pieces. Spearing a piece she looked over at Ash, "Where are you going to college?" She asked in a voice which promised torment untold should one refuse to answer.

"Uh, well, I hadn't really thought about..."

"So no plans then, what do you think you're going to do for a living?"

"Err, well, I was planning on becoming a rally racer." Ash gulped.

"What are your backup plans?"

"Uh, I thought I could go into the repair business."

"This isn't that big a town and we already have several repair shops, where would you open it?"

"I, hadn't,"

A bang rang through the dining room when Emily smacked her hand down on the table.  
"Mom! That's enough! Stop treating Ash like the suspect in an investigation." Emily caught the look of gratitude in Ash's eyes as they glanced at each other.

"Well excuse me for wanting to make sure my Daughter's best friend had a plan for her life!"

"Not everybody has to have their whole life planned out from birth! She's good at racing, she's a great mechanic, and if worse comes to worse she can always pick up a job modeling!

Ash felt distinctly uncomfortable as she watched the mother-daughter duo fight over her even as she internally screamed she'd rather die than model.

"It's not easy getting into modeling no matter how pretty you are, as for racing that's unrealistic and at the very least she'd need to take classes on small business management if she wanted to open a shop! She's ready to graduate and it's time she thought about these things!"

Ash cringed as the argument quickly turned into a shouting match she could barely understand and was slipping out of her seat to leave when a hand grabbed her wrist in a vice grip, "come on Ash, we're leaving!"

Before the boy-turned-girl knew it she'd been pulled from the dining room out the front door and led to her car where Emily got in the passenger side. Ash quickly got behind the wheel, "Em, are you," The sniffle interrupted her, "Just drive Ash, please. I don't want to be here right now."

Ash started the engine and put the car in gear slowly heading out of town and up the mountain. Despite the fact that it was a school night Ash was careful on the drive up. It wasn't unheard of for racers to get extra practice during the week. They made it up the mountain without incident and Ash parked. "Are you okay?"

"I will be, it's just, ugh, she invited you over to dinner without telling me and then she started giving you the third degree and it's just, ugh, you know?"

"Not really, I mean, my dad's always been kind of relaxed, he's never done that with any of my friends."

Emily just looked over at her before smiling to herself sadly. "Yeah, friends," Emily looked down for a minute, "Ash?" The questioning tone in her voice made the young woman next to her look up.

"Yeah Emily?"

Emily stared at her, "Nothing, just, thanks for being here." She took Ash's hand in hers.

"Anytime Em."

AN: I am aware I said I had no intention of continuing this story. However while on the misfile forums inspiration struck, while this chapter's been posted over there for awhile, it's just now making it's debut, enjoy.


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